


could you have ever done any different

by chadsuke



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Post-Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:15:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26477068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chadsuke/pseuds/chadsuke
Summary: Ahsoka on her journey to the Outer Rims, post-Order 66.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano
Kudos: 25





	could you have ever done any different

**Author's Note:**

> for criptocheca on tumblr!!!

She wakes with a scream on her lips.

Ahsoka swallows it, doesn’t let it pass, but it’s still there. Still hovers, and she shakes, stuffing one fist in her mouth and trying to breathe.

There may be no more Jedi dying, no more Jedi left to kill, but their screams and their memories still echo across the stars, still resonate in her dreams.

It's not the first night she's awakened like this, nor the last. It doesn't matter what planet it is she has tucked herself away on, or what ship, as she heads to the Outer Rim to hide, to tuck herself away and try to survive this. She awakens with a scream on her lips and she swallows it, bites her tongue or her fingers and lets the copper tang fill her mouth as she tries to keep it inside.

The echoes thrum within her, the memories of days she never thought would seem so fleeting, so gone. What ifs... they echo, reverberate, and there's no way she can counter them. What if she had told the Jedi Council everything that Maul had said? What if she had allied herself with him, hadn't captured him and instead gone to take down Sidious? What if she had never left her Master's side, what if she hadn't gone after Maul and had chosen to go with him instead, what if she had managed to speak with him and tell him of what Maul said, or or or-

It's easy, to look back on it, to look back on this war that was just the engineering of the Sith, of Palpatine, and think of what she would do differently. What she wishes she had done differently, and yet cannot reach back and change.

Anakin... She breathes, exhales, and pulls her fist out from her mouth.

This planet may be Outer Rim but is still too Inner for her, too close to stay here permanently, but she has given herself a few days of respite and she regrets it now. Some sleep, Ahsoka had thought, would do her well and yet here she is at some ungodly hour of the morning, blankets strewn about her as she struggles with the desires to scream, to cry, to throw up.

But she won't. She won't.

There have been too many Jedi who have died for her to collapse - too many clones, forced to turn against those that they care for, too many died in the crossfire. She thinks of Master Koon, of how close he had been with the team he commanded... Will the clones ever wake? Ever understand what they've done, or care? Is it better that they do not?

She is relieved - so relieved, that Rex was with her, that she could save him. If he had been with Anakin... The thought brings tears to her eyes, just prickling on the edges, and she wonders what her Master would have done. What he had done. Who had brought him down? Who had managed to shoot him in the back, to slip something past his blade?

Ahsoka hopes, greedily hopes, that he did not see it. That he did not know who did it - or that it was a clone he did not know, one he was not close to and was completely unfamiliar with.

(She hadn't felt him die - hadn't felt his death, and so she doesn't know. He may have been lost in the wash, in the large number, or perhaps perished before, or after, or... Sometimes, Ahsoka remembers what Maul had said about Anakin and cannot bear it, cannot.)

What of Obi-wan? Of her Grandmaster? Had he died from the hands of his trusted, of Cody? Had he perished in another way? Or what of Master Yoda? Or Senator Amidala?

There had been so much death, all at once. So many lost that she could scarcely point out the individuals, scarcely begin to figure out details. It's a blessing, in some ways. Ahsoka thinks she would perish if she knew the details of every Jedi who had fallen, felt the betrayal that must have run through their veins, the shock, the horror - yet on the other hand, the empty holes leave her imagination to fill them in, and her imagination could be much worse than the actual truth.

Ahsoka pulls her knees to her chest, resting her forehead on them, willing it all away. Thinking on it will do nothing. Trying to figure out the horrors... nothing.

She thinks, instead, of Barriss. It's a wound less fresh, now. Something that has time to heal. Her friend had been right about the corruption that lingered, about the Jedi fighting for the dark side, the falling of the Republic - but not the source. Yet, still, if they had listened... or if she had gone about it a different way...

Abruptly, Ahsoka realizes that she doesn't know her fate. She has no idea what ended up happening to her. Yes, Barriss was locked away for her crimes - but now that the Jedi have fallen, what has become of her? Has she perished, killed by the clones in her cell? Had she died before that? Has she managed to escape?

It's so ironic to her that out of everyone, she and Barriss may be two of the few survivors... that Ahsoka laughs quietly. It's not a happy laugh. It's a laugh with bitterness strung into it, and she lets the tears gathered fall, wipes them away with one hand as she brings her head up and straightens up. She looks at the far wall, at the nothingness on it. "Master," she whispers. "Give me strength. Okay?"

She will get no more sleep tonight, and she rises to leave. One more planet, two more, three more - as many as it takes. She'll keep going.

It's all Ahsoka can do.

* * *

He had not felt her, in the deaths. Perhaps it had been wishful thinking. That simply because he had not felt her, that she was still among the living.

Burnt, unconscious, dead but not allowed to die - and yet he had thought through all of that, the death of his former Padawan would have shown through? He is foolish. He has always been.

Darth Vader is fire. He is a black behemoth, smoking within - a machine run on the fuel that is his anger. He is touched by fire and filled with fire - the pain and anger is all he has, and he clings to it with the fierce hatred of one who has never learned to stop fighting, even when it may be better to.

But when he stands before the two lightsabers, the ones he has searched across many worlds to find, he feels cold.

It is a cold fire. A cold anger. Darth Vader can shed no more tears - it is not physically possible, even if he wanted to. There had been no real plan, no real thought. What would he have done, had she lived? If there had been nothing to find? Darth Vader does not want to think about that.

But he is still Anakin Skywalker, and though no tears grace his eyes, no dampness even hinders his broken body - he weeps.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm love star wars... and i'm love ahsoka... so this was definitely fun to write. oof. star wars makes me cry.
> 
> thanks for reading!! you can find me on tumblr on my writing blog **ftcoye** or my personal **chadsuke**.


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